gamification – MindShifthttps://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift
KQED Public Media for Northern CAWed, 21 Feb 2018 08:01:45 +0000en-UShourly1https://wordpress.org/?v=4.2.2KQED Public Media for Northern CAgamification – MindShiftKQED Public Media for Northern CAMindShiftgamification – MindShifthttps://u.s.kqed.net/2016/08/25/MindShiftiTunegraphic1400x1400.pnghttps://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift
88007858Teens and Tech: Distinguishing Addiction from Habithttps://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/2018/02/05/teens-and-tech-distinguishing-addiction-from-habit/
https://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/2018/02/05/teens-and-tech-distinguishing-addiction-from-habit/#commentsMon, 05 Feb 2018 18:49:19 +0000https://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/?p=50510Look up from this screen right now. Take a look around. On a bus. In a cafe. Even at a stoplight. Chances are, most of the other people in your line of sight are staring at their phones or other devices. And if they don’t happen to have one out, it is certainly tucked away in a pocket or bag.

But are we truly addicted to technology? And what about our kids? It’s a scary question, and a big one for scientists right now. Still, while the debate rages on, some doctors and technologists are focusing on solutions.

“There is a fairly even split in the scientific community about whether ‘tech addiction’ is a real thing,” says Dr. Michael Bishop. He runs Summerland, which he calls “a summer camp for screen overuse,” for teens.

Dueling diagnoses

“Technology addiction” doesn’t appear in the latest Diagnostic and Statistical Manual, the DSM-V, published in 2013. That’s the Bible of the psychiatric profession in the United States. The closest it comes is something called “Internet Gaming Disorder,” and that is listed as a condition for further study, not an official diagnosis.

This omission is important not only because it shapes therapists’ and doctors’ understanding of their patients, but because without an official DSM code, it is harder to bill insurers for treatment of a specific issue.

The World Health Organization has, by contrast, listed “gaming disorder” as a disorder due to an addictive behavior in the next edition of the International Classification of Diseases, an internationally used diagnostic manual.

Dr. Nicholas Kardaras is the author of the 2016 book Glow Kids: How Screen Addiction Is Hijacking Our Kids. When I ask him about the term “addiction” he doesn’t miss a beat.

There are brain-imaging studies of the effects of screen time, he says. And he also has treated many teens who are so wrapped up in video games that they don’t even get up to use the bathroom.

He says the evidence is clear, but we’re not ready to face it.

“We have, as a society, gone all-in on tech,” he says. “So we don’t want some buzz-killing truth-sayers telling us that the emperor has no clothes and that the devices that we’ve all so fallen in love with can be a problem” — especially for kids and their developing brains, he adds.

Addiction may not be an official term in the U.S., at least not yet. But researchers and clinicians like Bishop, who avoid using it, are still concerned about some of the patterns of behavior they see.

“I came to this issue out of a place of deep skepticism: addicted to video games? That can’t be right,” said Dr. Douglas Gentile at Iowa State University, who has been researching the effects of media on children for decades.

But, “I’ve been forced by data to accept that it’s a problem,” he told me when I interviewed him for my bookThe Art of Screen Time. “Addiction to video games and Internet use, defined as ‘serious dysfunction in multiple aspects of your life that achieves clinical significance,’ does seem to exist.”

It also doesn’t address the question, raised by some of the clinicians I’ve spoken with, of whether media overuse is best thought of as a symptom of something else, such as depression, anxiety or ADHD. Gentile’s definition simply asks whether someone’s relationship to media is causing problems to the extent that they would benefit from getting some help.

Gentile was one of the co-authors of a study published in November that tried to shed more light on that question. The study has the subtitle “A Parent Report Measure of Screen Media ‘Addiction’ in Children.” Note that the term addiction is in quotes here. In the study, researchers asked parents of school-aged children to complete a questionnaire based on the criteria for “Internet Gaming Disorder.”

For example, it asked, is their preferred media activity the only thing that puts them in a good mood? Are they angry or otherwise unhappy when forced to unplug? Is their use increasing over time? Do they sneak around to use screens? Does it interfere with family activities, friendships or school?

The experts I’ve talked to say the question of whether an adult, or a child, has a problem with technology can’t be answered simply by measuring screen time. What matters most, this study suggests, is your relationship to it, and that requires looking at the full context of life.

Seeking treatment

Though tech addiction isn’t officially recognized yet in the United States, there are in-patient treatment facilities for teens that try to address the problem.

For my book, I interviewed a teenage boy who attended a wilderness therapy program in Utah called Outback.

“I started playing when I was around 9 years old,” said Griffin, whose last name I didn’t use to protect his privacy. He chose email over a phone interview. “I played because I found it fun, but after a while I played mostly because I preferred it over socializing and confronting my problems.”

After he spent weeks hiking through the wilderness, his mother saw a lot of improvement in his demeanor and focus. However, Griffin came home to a reality where he still needed a laptop for high school and still used a smartphone to connect with friends.

Bishop, who runs two therapeutic Summerland camps in California and North Carolina, says the teens who come to him fall into two broad categories. There are the ones, overwhelmingly boys, who spend so much time playing video games that, in his words, they “fall behind in their social skills.” Often they are battling depression or anxiety, or may be on the autism spectrum.

Then, there is a group of mostly girls who misuse and overuse social media. They may be obsessed with taking selfies — Bishop calls them “selfists” — or they may have sent inappropriate pictures of themselves or bullied others online.

Regardless of the problem, “We feel the issue is best conceptualized as a ‘habit’ over an ‘addiction,’ ” Bishop says. “When teens think about their behavior as a habit, they are more empowered to change.”

Labeling someone an addict, essentially saying they have a chronic disease, is a powerful move. And it may be especially dangerous for teens, who are in the process of forming their identities, says Maia Szalavitz.

Szalavitz is an addiction expert and the author of Unbroken Brain: A Revolutionary New Way Of Understanding Addiction. Based on her experience with drug and alcohol addiction, she thinks grouping kids together who have problems with screens can be counterproductive. Young people with milder problems may learn from their more “deviant peers,” she says. For that reason, she would encourage families to start with individual or family counseling.

Different habits demand different approaches to treatment. People who have problematic relationships with alcohol, drugs or gambling can choose abstinence, though it’s far from easy. Those who are binge eaters, however, cannot. They must rebuild their relationships with food while continuing to eat every day.

In today’s world, technology may be more like food than it is like alcohol. Video games or social media may be avoidable, but most students need to use computers for school assignments, build tech skills for the workplace, and learn to combat distraction and procrastination as part of growing up.

How can people, especially young people, forge healthier relationships with technology while continuing to use it every day? Some technologists believe that what has to happen is a change in the tech itself.

A public health approach

Tristan Harris is the cofounder of the Center for Humane Technology, an organization dedicated to pushing for more “humane” technology. A former “design ethicist” at Google, he tells NPR’s Steve Inskeep that he saw the tech industry turning toward something “less and less about actually trying to benefit people and more and more about how do we keep people hooked. ”

In other words, as long as these companies make their money from advertising, they will have incentive to try to design products that maximize the time you spend using them, whether or not it makes your life better. Harris’ solution is to pressure the industry to turn to new business models, such as subscription services. “We’re trying to completely change the incentives away from addiction, and the way to do that is to change the business model.”

Along with Common Sense Media, a nonprofit that offers parents research and resources on kids’ media use, they are currently launching a “Truth About Tech” campaign that Harris compares to anti-smoking campaigns exposing the workings of Big Tobacco.

Fighting tech with tech

For over a decade Gabe Zichermann was a self-described “cheerleader” for what’s called “gamification.” He consulted with the world’s largest corporations and governments on how to make their products and policies as compelling as a video game.

But, he says, “There was a moment I realized that things had gone too far.” He was in a restaurant and looked around and saw “literally everyone was looking at their phones.” Zichermann started thinking about his family history and about his own relationship to technology.

He realized that his work up to that point had been contributing to some serious social problems. Like Harris, he is concerned that in a world of ubiquitous and free content, platform and device makers make more money the more time you spend on screens.

This, he says, results in “a ton of compulsive behavior” — around everything from pornography to World of Warcraft to Facebook. Feeling “partially responsible,” Zichermann set out to create an anti-addiction app.

It’s called Onward, and it has a number of different features and approaches in both free and paid modes.

It can simply monitor in the background and give you a report of your use, which for some people, says Zichermann, is enough to motivate change. Or it can share that report with someone else — say, a parent — for accountability (the app is rated for use by 13-year-olds and above).

Or, say you want to stop browsing Facebook during business hours. The paid mode of the app allows you to block Facebook, but it can also monitor in the background to try to predict when you might be about to surf there. “The idea is that when the drink is in your hand, it’s too late,” says Zichermann.

In that moment, the app serves up an intervention like a breathing exercise, or an invitation to get in touch with a friend. Zichermann calls this, “a robot sitting on your shoulder — the angel of your good intention.”

The company has partnered with both UCLA Health and Columbia University Medical Center to research the efficacy of the app, and Zichermann says they plan to seek FDA approval as a so-called “digiceutical.”

In essence, Zichermann is trying to gamify balance — to keep score and offer people rewards for turning away from behavior that’s become a problem.

The word “addiction” may currently be attracting controversy, but you don’t need a doctor’s official pronouncement to work on putting the devices down more often — or to encourage your kids to do so as well.

Copyright 2018 NPR. To see more, visit http://www.npr.org/.

]]>https://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/2018/02/05/teens-and-tech-distinguishing-addiction-from-habit/feed/250510#savings: Can Social Media Nudge Teens into Smarter Money Choices?https://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/2016/03/16/savings-can-social-media-nudge-teens-into-smarter-money-choices/
https://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/2016/03/16/savings-can-social-media-nudge-teens-into-smarter-money-choices/#respondWed, 16 Mar 2016 20:05:32 +0000http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/?p=44370In the fall of 2008, Ted Gonder was studying economics at the University of Chicago as the world economy melted down around him.

“We were learning about the collapse in this ivory tower, theoretical, Wall Street Journal context,” Gonder recalled. “But a few blocks from campus was one of the hardest hit inner-city neighborhoods—a bank desert with one of the highest foreclosure rates in the country.”

The juxtaposition led Gonder and some classmates to start a financial education program for high school students in schools in low-income communities. Now a nonprofit called Moneythink, it has with 30 university chapters in 10 states, Moneythink takes a blended learning approach, by mixing personalized mentoring with the power of social media.

With Gonder as CEO, Moneythink starts with committed college mentors who meet weekly with small “teams” of juniors and seniors in local high schools to talk about mindful spending, goal-directed saving, and the smart use of credit cards and other financial products. And, since 2014, the nonprofit has been piloting an app called Moneythink Mobile, to push these lessons beyond classroom walls, track their impact, and use “likes” and other social nudges to encourage better real-world money habits.

Typically, several mentors split a class so each works with no more than five students. Before the groups talk money, they just talk — discussing the personal interests and goals that ground Moneythink’s spending and saving exercises.

Each classroom lesson is paired with a financial challenge on Moneythink Mobile, an Instagram-like platform on which students compete between weekly meetings with their mentors. In the “Snaptrack” challenge, for example, students post savings moments—a photo of a packed lunch, the pricey shoes they decided not to buy, or the coupon they used at the grocery store—captioned with a description, a dollar amount and #savings.

Every post earns students points that position them in the app’s “leader board.” Over the course of the pilot, however, Moneythink Mobile’s developers have learned not to push gamification too far.

“A lot of our students are dealing with some very real financial situations. Sometimes, they’re the ones buying the family groceries. They’ve seen parents lose jobs and even lose homes,” said Kelly Carlquist, an analyst at Goldman Sachs who was president of Moneythink’s Northwestern University chapter until she graduated in 2014 and now chairs its young professional’s board. “We don’t want to turn this into too much of a game, which would cannibalize our efforts to bring this into a real-life context.”

Besides, more than points, students seem to crave the little bursts of digital attention and applause that their posts generate. They spice their comments with emoji ranging from a simple thumbs-up of approval to a ninja indicating special savings skills to a smug blue face that looks decidedly unimpressed.

“It helps students think about their purchasing behavior through the lens of delaying gratification by not spending, but getting some likes and comments as instant gratification for doing that,” said Gonder.

To prime the social pump, the app’s developers recently added an “explore” function so that users at one high school can scan and comment on spending and saving posts from around the country. Students need a code to access the app, and mentors monitor posts to quash insults and the sharing of sensitive information such as a legible photo of a new debit card.

Brittany Bui (left) and AJ Wheatley, co-presidents of the Moneythink chapter at Chapman University in Orange, California, at last year’s freshman activity fair. (Courtesy of Kara Zucker)

So far, about 4,600 students have used Moneythink Mobile, including more than 1,000 in the fall of 2015, collectively posting several thousand dollars in savings. Obviously, mentors can’t verify the figures, nor do they typically add up the dollars students claim to have saved. That’s of secondary importance, according to Brittany Bui, a senior finance major and co-president of the Moneythink chapter at Chapman University in Orange, California. The Chapman mentors work with students at Orange High School, where nearly three quarters of the students qualify for free or reduced-price lunch.

“It’s not so much the specifics of the post itself,” said Bui. “It’s getting into the habit of thinking about what they’re buying. Are they saving, or not? Having them take pics and post makes them more mindful spenders.”

With that said, the numbers aren’t completely irrelevant.

“One of my students posted a pic of the coffee her mom made at home that she started drinking instead of making daily runs to Starbucks,” Bui recalled. “We talked about it in class, and three of the girls in my group were drinking Frappuccinos.”

They did the math. Saving just $3 a day by opting for home-brewed coffee over Starbucks for one year adds up to more than $1000.

The Moneythink curriculum encourages students to think of money as a tool to express their values. If travel is more important to you than tasty coffee treats, for example, then the smart choice is to skip the Frappuccinos and use the thousand bucks on a trip. Another Moneythink Mobile challenge called “Follow the Money” spurs these values discussions by asking students to rate each other’s spending posts as a “good spend,“ or a “bad spend.”

Other challenges include “Tap to Save” focused on racking up small savings toward a specific goal, and “Sage Selfie” in which students post a pic of a friend or family member who offered advice about financial products such as checking accounts and credit cards, captioned with the advice received.

The volume of posts and interactions reflect the strength of the mentor-student relationship, according to Moneythink’s product manager Nathan Ranney.

“It drives engagement when mentors really get to know their students, help them set relevant goals and comment on their posts,” said Ranney. “It lets students know that there’s really somebody on the other end of this thing who’s following me, thinking about me, and cares.”

In the future, Gonder hopes Moneythink Mobile will expand the nonprofit’s reach and deliver targeted financial education to places closer to meaningful money choices, such as youth employment agencies and college advisors. Also, because many students live in so-called “bank deserts” dominated by check-cashers and payday loan vendors, Moneythink is starting to talk with banks about how they might partner with the app, perhaps by linking to an account students could use without an adult cosigner.

Wherever the app goes, Gonder stresses that the technology will never take the place of strong mentoring relationships.

“Social media isn’t a fix in itself. It’s just a tool to enhance the human interactions,” he said. “In the next phase we want to crystallize the specific financial behaviors we want to see, to help students get out of the cash economy, save more regularly and meet their goals.”

]]>https://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/2016/03/16/savings-can-social-media-nudge-teens-into-smarter-money-choices/feed/044370berdik-MoneythinkBrittany Bui (left) and AJ Wheatley, co-presidents of the Moneythink chapter at Chapman University in Orange, California, at last year's freshman activity fair.Pursuing Quests: How Digital Games Can Create a Learning Journeyhttps://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/2015/12/04/pursuing-quests-how-digital-games-can-create-a-learning-journey/
https://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/2015/12/04/pursuing-quests-how-digital-games-can-create-a-learning-journey/#commentsFri, 04 Dec 2015 08:00:57 +0000http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/?p=42713Completing missions for rewards is a core mechanic in many video games, including best-sellers like “World of Warcraft,” “Grand Theft Auto,” “Fallout” and “Skyrim.” Quests are diverse and optional, and players can undertake them on their own schedule. Unlike their plastic and cardboard counterparts, digital games leverage a computer’s power to manage elaborate player profiles and track complex, dynamic and personalized task structures. Now that students have increased access to computers and smartphones, the powerful digital engagement system can be put in the service of education.

Taking a page from the video game book, Dr. Chris Haskell and Dr. Lisa Dawley, from the education department at Boise State University, saw the potential for integrating quests and other game elements to deliver coursework. Six years ago, they developed 3D GameLab, a Web-based learning management system that helps run classes in a gamelike, quest-based format.

“A good quest-based curriculum meets the needs of many students by offering a multiplicity of choices that cover standards,” said Haskell.

He emphasizes that the word “quest” is not merely a superficial renaming of “essay” or “assignment” to make it sound more exciting. Rather, it marks a crucial structural shift in how students undertake schoolwork. Students can choose from a variety of tasks, work at their own pace and unlock new options as they progress. The system also encourages mastery, as quests are accepted only when completed to the highest standard. If a submitted task is not up to par, students can rework and resubmit until they get it right, rather than simply settle for a low grade and move on.

“We began looking for ways to meta-game curricular activities,” said Haskell. “We built 3D GameLab to allow us to deliver any curriculum with game-based mechanics. If we were inspired by anything or anyone, it was Blizzard and Cryptic Studios and their approaches to delivering quests within the construct of a universe.”

3D GameLab lets educators track experience points, use leaderboards, badges, achievements, awards and, most importantly, quests. Haskell reports that more than 1,000 teachers and 20,000 students are currently using the platform.

One of those teachers is Steve Isaacs, who uses a quest-based system to deliver his entire Grade 8 game design class at William Annin Middle School in Basking Ridge, New Jersey.

“First and foremost, choice in learning paths provide students with opportunities to find their areas of interest,” said Isaacs. “In my course, learning goals are covered through a variety of paths. There are coding quests that teach computational thinking, coding, problem-solving, etc. There are also quests that provide opportunities for students to use a variety of tools to create games.”

When he first waded into quest-based learning, Isaacs created one central quest path that his students followed at slightly varied paces, and he added some optional side quests that could be completed for extra credits.

“What I noticed was that kids would come in and start a quest they wanted to work on, only to be stopped by me a few minutes into class to return to my agenda,” remembered Isaacs. “After some thought, I realized that I had kids excited about learning based on choice. This was very powerful, and I got out of my own way and provided students with more autonomy over their learning.”

Playing School

Peggy Sheehy, a middle school teacher and librarian at Suffern Middle School in Suffern, New York, has drawn international attention for her use of “World of Warcraft” with her students. Sheehy worked with Lucas Gillispie, a North Carolina district tech coordinator, and lead teacher Craig Lawson to develop curriculum around the game, which is now available on their website as a free Creative Commons download.

The popular sword and sorcery video game makes extensive use of quests and quest mechanics, which Sheehy and her colleagues reworked to align with Common Core standards. Hearing about their work, the researchers at Boise invited her to pilot 3D GameLab, and she has been using it every since.

Sheehy has a wealth of stories about struggling students who flourished once they approached learning through the lens of games and quests.

“Reluctant or disenfranchised students are very likely to demonstrate renewed interest and engagement when presented with the game-infused option,” she said. “Once the kids were granted some agency in the trajectory of their learning, they really wanted to succeed.” But she also recognizes that games may not be for everybody.

“If we associate quest-based learning with games, there will always be a few kids who are not interested. They are usually the kids who have mastered ‘playing school’ and excel at the textbook, notetaking, worksheet learning of which they are so familiar,” said Sheehy. “But even those kids, when quests take them to a video and then a quiz or request research and a short paragraph, appreciate the ability to retry, the ranks and badges, and the freedom to quest from home, thereby granting them multiple opportunities to advance at their own pace according to their own schedules.”

With quests titled “Random Acts of Epic Kindness” and “A Better World Online” that encourage reflection on online behavior, Sheehy not only seeks to nurture better students but also better digital citizens. The option to choose is fundamental to freedom, democracy and consumer culture, but there is little choice offered in the schools and classrooms that endeavor to prepare students for participation in society. Managing choice through decisions is a skill that requires practice, especially for a future that, if nothing else, will involve a deluge of information. The challenges produced by managing choices in the form of quests are important rehearsals for future decision-making.

“Many who shift a traditional module-based class to a quest-based approach discover that many students complete coursework very quickly,” Haskell said. “If they are not prepared to give them additional experiences within the curriculum, it can be disruptive. It’s a great problem to have, but it exists.”

]]>https://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/2015/12/04/pursuing-quests-how-digital-games-can-create-a-learning-journey/feed/142713Can Games and Badges Motivate College Students to Learn?https://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/2015/04/20/can-games-and-badges-motivate-college-students-to-learn/
https://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/2015/04/20/can-games-and-badges-motivate-college-students-to-learn/#commentsMon, 20 Apr 2015 18:01:32 +0000http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/?p=40078At what point does an educator turn to games? K-12 educators have a good track record of using games to engage children, but when it comes to higher education, students are largely on their own. As these digital natives make their way through college, professors are looking to use games and digital media to help students learn. The use of games by educators is often motivated by the desire to better engage students and align instructional practices. Some educators are turning to game-based learning, but gamification is also serving a purpose.

Engagement and games, however, is not without controversy. At the heart of the issue is gamification, a term commonly defined as the addition of reward systems to non-game settings and contexts. This can take the form of airline loyalty points or gold stars. Many game designers and scholars believe that these extrinsic motivators are not games at all. Rather, they feel that good games should rely on stories, quests and intrinsic challenges. These are characteristics of gameful design or game-based learning, as opposed to the mere badging and points that characterize gamification.

If a class runs exactly as it always has, except that students receive badges and points in lieu of marks and grades, is it really a game? Does this question matter if student performance improves due to the draw of extrinsic lures? How does student behaviour change in a strictly gamified class?

These are the questions professor David Leach set out to answer with an experiment he conducted at the University of Victoria in British Columbia, Canada. As a prize-winning magazine writer, editor and creative writing teacher, he understands the value of narrative, but he also has an interest in games. “Further reading led me into the discussion—and controversy— around gamification in education. I read a lot of pros versus cons but not a lot of real experimental evidence for the effectiveness of these tools. The Systems CIO at our university gave me research money to run an experiment on the effectiveness of gamification.”

To test the advantages and disadvantages of gamification, Leach ran two parallel sections of his Human Uses of Technology course. One was taught as a regular class, while the other section used leaderboards, badges and points and, to a lesser degree, quests. “The stages of various assignments were also described as ‘quests’ but this was a very superficial narrative element. Mostly, the experiment’s focus was on the crudest use of popular gamification tools,” said Leach.

In the end, the gamification group visited the online course site twice as often and spent double the amount of time as the regular class. Their blog posts were submitted earlier and they were significantly more active on the online class forum. A post-game survey revealed that 82% of the students believed that gamification was an effective motivational tool. Surprisingly, despite their higher activity on the class site, the gamified group demonstrated no improved learning outcomes in their academic performance in the course.

Leach’s research paper on the experiment concludes that “gamification can offer incentives for online activity and socializing but, on its own, may have little impact on quantifiable learning outcomes.” These results might change with alterations to badge criteria and/or how points are awarded, which might impact how students distribute their efforts.

Fortunately, gamified and gameful designs are not mutually exclusive, and combining both may cast the widest motivational net, significantly improving chances to capture hearts and minds.

A Playbor of Love

Recasting college level classes as games can be enormously rewarding and beneficial for students and instructors but, as all genuine innovation, hurdles must be cleared.

“Story, I think, is the real power of game-based learning,” said Leach, but he underscores a structural challenge to implementation when he adds that “the modular set-up of most university programs — 1.5 hour classes twice per week, students taking four or five different courses at a time — undermine developing that sense of narrative engagement in a university setting.” Can multiple courses be integrated into a single game? Can schedules be abolished to make way for more sophisticated asynchronous gameplay? Time will tell.

Leach also believes that universities could look to the K-12 system, where the emphasis is on pedagogy rather than research. “Mostly, I think university instructors have a lot to learn from K-12 teachers, where there is far more innovation in the fields of game-based learning. The lack of communication between the K-12 and post-secondary realms is a huge barrier to innovation.”

Implementing a game-based class also means an increased workload for already busy professors. Bob De Schutter, a game design professor at Miami University, writes that it can be a “long and laborious process to get it right.” However, tools like 3D Gamelab, and the benefit of tried and established models from pioneers like Lee Sheldon and Chris Haskell, will all prove helpful to reduce the time commitment for educators who want to jump into the fray.

Ultimately, it might be more accurate to frame the extra work as playbor rather than labor. “Truth of the matter is that I love doing the gameful course,” said De Schutter. “It is fun to ambush students, to bring their heroes in the conversation and to basically game-master a class, and it is just as fun for students to battle each other or slay vampire kitties. That does not necessarily make an already engaging teaching style any more engaging, but it does make your class significantly more awesome.”

]]>https://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/2015/04/20/can-games-and-badges-motivate-college-students-to-learn/feed/640078Tapping Into the Potential of Games and Uninhibited Play for Learninghttps://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/2014/04/22/tapping-into-the-potential-of-video-games-and-uninhibited-play-for-learning-education/
https://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/2014/04/22/tapping-into-the-potential-of-video-games-and-uninhibited-play-for-learning-education/#commentsTue, 22 Apr 2014 14:00:33 +0000http://blogs.kqed.org/mindshift/?p=35180” credit=”Getty

By now, you’ve probably heard the buzzwords: “game-based learning” and “gamification” are pervading headlines in education coverage. Video games have always been popular with kids, but now increasingly, educators are trying to leverage the interactive power of video games for learning. Why? It turns out games are actually really good teachers.

Think about the compounding way in which Angry Birds teaches the rules, one baby step at a time, one superpower after another. Video games teach players the skills needed to overcome particular kinds of challenges; then they require a demonstration of mastery in order to move onto the next level. Players may get three or four chances to show their ability to execute the new skill. If they fail, it’s back to the prior level. If they succeed, it’s on to the next.

Think about popular games, old and new: Pac-Man, Mario Brothers, Space Invaders, Minecraft. Even very small kids can learn to play really complex games. Kids play for hours until they master the game, until they discover the patterns. They talk about it with their friends. They share tips. They share tricks. They learn together.

All games facilitate some kind of learning. Even games that are not meant to be educational teach kids something — even if it’s just the rules of the game. The learning is so effective that it deserves our attention. Educational psychologists study it. Sociologists study it. Neuroscientists study it. They’re all trying to figure out what makes the great games work. In some cases, researchers are attempting to isolate and identify the attributes of video games that stimulate engagement and perseverance. It is this kind of research that has led to the “gamification” trend.

Gamification is popular in advertising, human resources, coffee shop loyalty programs, ongoing fast food promotions. Think of McDonald’s Monopoly game as an early example of intentional gamification. In general, gamification attempts to superimpose the stimulating motivational aspects of the game world onto the life world.

Across the country, teachers are using gamification in their classrooms every day. They gamify learning by replacing grades with levels and merit badges. Rather than simply delivering lectures and then testing for retention, gamification manifests when teachers create project-based units where completion, or the demonstration of mastery, is what allows the student to move on.

When learning is structured like a game, students intuitively understand the cumulative nature of learning. They’re motivated to master a compounding sequence of skills.

Perhaps students receive badges recognizing the successful completion of each assignment. Maybe future learning units are imagined like sequential game worlds–a certain number of badges are required to “open each portal.” The portal is the next lesson or the next learning module. When learning is structured this way, students intuitively understand the cumulative nature of learning. They’re motivated to master a compounding sequence of skills.

TAPPING INTO THE NATURAL INSTINCT TO LEARN

Any teacher can implement a “gamified” approach fairly easily — you don’t need tablets or laptop computers. It’s a matter of reframing traditional assignments as inquiry-based individual or group projects. It’s also a matter of employing a more mastery-based assessment strategy that’s grounded in project-based learning and understanding the motivational benefits of a more game-like structure. Done well, gamifying the classroom encourages students to be motivated by the excitement of moving on to new challenges. Gaming emotions like “Fiero” become a commonplace part of the learning experience. Fiero is the rush of excitement that gamers experience when they overcome challenges. In Reality is Broken, a popular book that suggests ways to bring the wisdom of the game-world into the real-word, Jane McGonigal writes:

Fiero, according to researchers at the Center for Interdisciplinary Brain Science Research at Stanford, is the emotion that first created the desire to leave the cave and conquer the world. It’s a craving for challenges that we can overcome, battles we can win, and dangers we can vanquish.

Scientist have recently documented that fiero is one of the most powerful neurochemical highs we can experience. It involves three different structures of the reward circuitry of the brain, including the mesocorticolimbic center, which is most typically associated with reward and addiction. Fiero is a rush unlike any other rush, and the more challenging the obstacle we overcome, the more intense the fiero.

Obviously, when researchers stick their microscopes in people’s brains they don’t find neuro-receptors with the word “fiero” scribbled on them like tiny calligraphy on a minuscule grain of rice. But the word “fiero” was chosen by researchers for a reason — to signify a particular neurochemical phenomena. Why that word?

The Italian word “fiero” comes from the same Latin root as our English word “fierce.” This is not only because the particular kind of pride that fiero describes makes us feel like an aggressive alpha predator at the top of the virtual food chain. Fiero also has to do with feeling of wildness. The Latin root “fiera” is also the origin of the English word “feral,” which means untamed or undomesticated.

The feeling of fiero, then, is less about pride and more about being your untamed self. Fiero is about the way you feel when you are liberated from restrictions and constraints and enabled to just be uninhibited, to play free. Gamers want those little rushes of fiero because, in a way, it’s the opposite of feeling self-conscious, of feeling like they need to conform. It neurochemically reminds them that they have the ability to respond in an unrestrained way to the immediate circumstances of the world around them.

In the classroom, fiero makes students see that they’re empowered players in their own education. They’re released into the exciting adventure that learning can be. Without the intrinsic motivating power of fiero, however, gamification becomes nothing more than semantic spin: a language game in which a letter-based grade system is replaced by a points-based reward system. In these cases, gamification does little to address the shortcomings of a system that relies on high-stakes testing.

Be wary of gamifying your classroom in a way that disempowers students through extrinsic rewards. Remember, it is not the gold stars, points, or smiley faces that motivate gamers (nor students). Stars, points, and badges are simply symbolic representations marking a task well-done. All teachers, however, can attempt to harness the motivational power of fiero.

GAME-BASED LEARNING VS. GAMIFICATION

Game-based learning is another great way to empower your students to engage with intellectual problems. They get to experience the fiero rush that comes with knowing that they successfully overcame a challenge. That’s right: game-based learning is different from gamification. Gamification is about making a non-game into a game. Game-based learning usually refers to using actual digital video games as a classroom tool (although, traditional non electronic role playing and board games work exactly the same way, but perhaps not so efficiently), and there’s a slew of video games, digital apps, and adaptive software platforms that can be used for instruction. Some are great, while others are not so helpful.

Each time we reframe class content in order to clarify something, we’re reaching for a tool. Every time we try a different activity with the hope that this approach will deepen our students’ understanding, we’re using a new tool. Teachers can never have too many tools in their tool boxes. Tools enable flexibility and great teaching requires being adaptable.

This blog series is an in-depth guide to game-based teaching tools. It’s about making it easy for you to adopt games for teaching. It’s not that we want you to replace what you’re already doing with video games. Instead, we want you to supplement and compliment your already successful strategies with another potentially powerful tool.

Over the next few weeks and months, we’ll explain the key ideas in game-based learning. We’ll discuss pedagogy, implementation, and assessment. We’ll summarize the research and provide suggestions for practical use. We’ll talk about the pros and cons of game-based learning. We’ll offer you a guide for adding games to your classroom.

As tech tools continue to proliferate with new launches and new products, it’s difficult to predict what will stick and what won’t. A recently released report by the New Media Consortium and EDUCAUSE Learning Initiative (ELI) tries to sift through the fads and find the few that will have a real impact on education in the next few years.

What’s worth noting? Sometimes what seemed impossible only a few years ago has already become a new trend. The 2013 NMC Horizon’s Report on Higher Education, which brings together international experts in education and technology, attempts to take the pulse of emerging technologies in higher education and predict where the field will move in the near, middle and far term.

The report points to MOOCs, Massive Open Online Courses, as the big change agent in the higher ed landscape, but it also reaches a little further, bringing 3D printing and wearable technology into the mix.

KEY FACTORS

The panel considered some key factors influencing whether technologies take hold, identifying a move towards “open” content and the ability to share, manipulate, and mold. Even more critical for institutions of higher education is the rise of MOOCs. As more elite institutions align themselves with one MOOC organization or another, university leaders are considering the idea of “micro-credit” as an alternative to the traditional credits given at brick and mortar universities.

Equally important to information access are skills that employers expect recent graduates to bring with them — like communication and critical thinking. These skills are often augmented by real-world or informal learning experiences that move beyond the college lecture hall. Acknowledging that the trend of personalization and taking it a step further, the report also notes the increasing importance of learning analytics. Colleges will need to follow a student’s digital footprint to better tailor their educational experience. And all of this means a different role for university instructors. Students have much better access to knowledge through technology which necessitates that professors become mentors, collaborators, facilitators and ultimately not the center of the learning experience.

CHALLENGES

By and large the biggest barriers to implementing technology in higher education are the institutions and people who run them. Employers increasingly recognize that digital media literacy is an important skill set in the coming decades, but university faculty are neither equipped to teach those skills nor especially proficient themselves in many cases.

Lack of digital fluency is affecting scholarly collaboration, as well. Social media, blogging, link backs and other tech-based publication methods are not well understood or recognized by older, traditional faculty and administration. It’s far easier to continue with the status quo and too often professors trying new things are seen as teaching outside their role. This stodgy mentality stifles innovation.

“Simply capitalizing on new technology is not enough; the new models must use these tools and services to engage students on a deeper level.”

The panel also found that while there is a hunger for more personalized learning, the demand is not well supported by the technology. The mechanics of earning analytics are still in the nascent stages. Collecting, collating, and understanding the sheer volume of data is overwhelming to most at traditional universities. Many college instructors are not using technology in their research or in their teaching. It would take a larger cultural shift before many technologies could be considered widespread.

Lastly, the competition that MOOCs are bringing to the long-held university system is challenging the value of higher education. Many argue the competition is exactly what slow-moving universities need to change, but others wonder if the instruction offered by MOOCs reaches the same caliber. “As these new platforms emerge, however, there is a need to frankly evaluate the models and determine how to best support collaboration, interaction, and assessment at scale. Simply capitalizing on new technology is not enough; the new models must use these tools and services to engage students on a deeper level,” the report notes.

NEAR-TERM PREDICTIONS (WITHIN THE YEAR)

Both MOOCs and tablets will be widely adopted in university settings within the year. The popularity of MOOCs like Coursera, Udacity and edX are undeniable with enrollment in some classes exceeding 100,000 students. Unparalleled access excites many people, but raises questions. “One of the most appealing promises of MOOCs is that they offer the possibility for continued, advanced learning at zero cost, allowing students, life-long learners, and professionals to acquire new skills and improve their knowledge and employability,” notes the report.

“Student-specific data can now be used to customize online course platforms and suggest resources to students in the same way that businesses tailor advertisements and offers to customers.”

As for tech hardware, tablets fit well with the university lifestyle. They’re light, portable, and allow students to interact with the lesson and their networks at the same time. Competition in the tablet space has increased, driving down the price and pushing the limits of capability. The report predicts tablet manufacturers will continue to offer more robust options for less money.

MID-TERM (TWO TO THREE YEARS)

A big prediction here is the rise of games and gamification to encourage students to participate with material in deeper ways. Educational gaming might seem like old news to some, but most often gaming comes up in a K-12 context. Now the same benefits are being applied to older students and more complicated subjects. Most of the excitement centers on gamification – integrating mechanics of games into non-game situations to inspire creativity and productivity. The strategy works well for many businesses and is gradually making its way onto college campuses.

Similarly, the report predicts that learning analytics will find a foothold in higher education in the next few years. “Student-specific data can now be used to customize online course platforms and suggest resources to students in the same way that businesses tailor advertisements and offers to customers,” the report said. Universities are already using big data to improve advising and help offer advice and strategies to struggling learners to improve retention. The data can also help universities to better allocate resources, fill holes and accurately understand how well they are serving students.

LONG TERM (FOUR TO FIVE YEARS)

The rise of the Maker movement has helped launch 3D printing back into the NMC Horizons predictions where it first appeared in 2004. The emphasis on design learning and DIY culture make 3D printers appealing.

Wearable technology will take off on college campuses as thin film technology makes it possible for screens to mold around body curves. And these devices aren’t just cool. “Wearable devices are also proving to be effective tools for research because they use sensors to track data, such as vital signs, in real-time. Although wearable technology is not yet pervasive in higher education, the current highly functional clothing and accessories in the consumer space show great promise,” the report says.

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Chocolate-covered broccoli. That’s what designers of educational games call digital products that drape dull academic instruction in the superficially appealing disguise of a game. Instead of placing the fun of discovery and mastery at the heart of the game, these imposters use the trappings of games “as a sugar coating” for their otherwise unappetizing content, note Jacob Habgood and Shaaron Ainsworth.

The two researchers, from the University of Nottingham in England, recently decided to find out whether children could detect such subterfuge, and whether they benefited more from lessons that masquerade as games—or from games that make learning an end in itself.

Habgood and Ainsworth began by creating a game, called Zombie Division, that aimed to teach math to students aged seven to 11. In the authors’ words, Zombie Division “is a 3D adventure game based around sword fighting in which the player (acting as the hero Matrices) must use different attacks to mathematically divide opponents according to the numbers on their chests.”

The scientists designed two different variants of the game: an “intrinsic” version, in which mastery of mathematical challenges produced rewards within the game, and an “extrinsic” version, in which a period of play was followed by an online math quiz. Both types contained the same instructional content, but in the extrinsic version that content was “delivered away from flow-inducing

Ineffective games bestow gold stars for good performance instead of making the incentives internal to the game.

game-play, and presented as abstract mathematical questions,” the researchers note. (“Flow,” as many gamers know, is a psychological state characterized by energetic, engaged immersion.) In the intrinsic model of the game, for example, a player who correctly divided his opponent with his sword would be rewarded by seeing his foe split into a proportional number of ghosts. In the quiz built into the extrinsic model, a player would simply be notified that her answer to a division problem was correct.

In Habgood and Ainsworth’s experiment, reported in the Journal of the Learning Sciences, one group of students was assigned to play the intrinsic version of Zombie Division for two hours. A second group played the extrinsic version for the same length of time. Afterward, both groups were tested on their knowledge of division.

The results were clear: The children who had played the intrinsically-rewarding game learned more math. Next, the researchers allowed another group of children to choose the option they preferred. The verdict here was even more definitive: The pupils spent seven times longer playing the intrinsic version of Zombie Division.

Many educational games fail to live up to their promise of effective, enjoyable learning; Habgood and Ainsworth suggest that’s because the games rely on an extrinsic reward structure, bestowing gold stars for good performance instead of making the incentives internal to the game. The key to creating a successful educational game, the authors conclude, is what they call “intrinsic integration”: ensuring that the mechanics of the game mesh tightly with the content the game is trying to teach. It’s a lesson that applies to offline education, too: Make the vegetables themselves taste good, and you won’t have to bribe kids with chocolate.

Gamification is one of the new buzzwords in social media circles. It’s the idea that by making non-gaming applications more game-like — by adding points, badges, levels, titles and other game mechanics — these apps become more fun and engaging.

The premise behind “gamifying” educational applications and websites is to instigate engagement and collaboration.

We see gamification at work in apps like Foursquare, where “checking in” and giving your location via the app earns you points and potentially the “mayorship” of venues. Even though the term may be new to some, gamification has been used for years for offline services too, such as earning points and unlocking special deals via frequent flyer programs.

The question now is whether (or how) gamification can be used in education. Are there ways in which it can be used to similar ends, to help students feel more involved and engaged in their learning?

In some ways, education is already replete with this sort of thing. You gain points (via assignments) to level up (in grades) and eventually win with a badge (your diploma). But that’s not really game-play. The premise behind “gamifying” educational applications and websites is to instigate engagement and collaboration.

To that end, the social learning network OpenStudy has unveiled some new rewards for active participants on the site — namely, medals and achievements — a first step in adding game mechanics to its site.

OpenStudy provides a place where learners can find others working in similar content areas in order to support each other and answer each others’ questions. The site is a recipient of one of the Gates Foundation’s recent Next Generation Learning Challenges for its work building out a global study network around opencourseware materials.

Those who are studying OpenCourseware are often, but not always, independent learners. While the OCW materials contain lecture notes, assignments, quizzes, PowerPoints, and sometimes videos, what they’re missing two big components: an instructor and a class. OpenStudy helps ameliorate the isolation for students by giving them a forum where they share questions and answers in real-time — where they can study together. In a popular class like MIT’s “Introduction to Computer Science,” there are so many learners signed up for Open Study that there are usually around 30 online at the same time.

The new gamification elements aim to meet a couple of OpenStudy’s goals: to make education more accessible by distributing the responsibility of teaching among an online group of peers, and to make education more enjoyable by making it game-like.

Even without the new rewards system for helping, plenty of users on OpenStudy already offer each other help. Some of the most loyal users of the site happen to also be some of the most active with offering their assistance. The gamification elements will recognize these helpful users, and encourage the behavior to spread.

The new features include the following:

Medals: Students can give medals to helpful peers. Medals are tracked at the study group level, so users will be able to see how helpful they are across different subjects.

Achievements: These will reward students for asking questions, socializing, engaging in particularly elaborate dialogue, and more. These will be rewarded both within study groups (for interacting with a particular subject) and across the site as a whole.

Fans: This will be OpenStudy’s version of testimonials, so users can become “fans” of people who’ve helped them. As you amass fans, you can unlock new titles and move from being a “pupil” to a “hero.”

After just one day in action, the site already has users who are “Super Heroes” with over 300 fans. OpenStudy is already a fairly active community — but the badges and titles may help it become even more robust.

Educators, have you used gamification tactics in class? Do points and badges make learning more engaging for students?